Oldest painting

First discovered in 1903, the prehistoric rock art of El Castillo cave in Puente Viesgo in the province of Cantabria, Spain, has been recently dated by a team of scientists from the Universities of Bristol and Southampton with a technique called uranium-series (U-series) dating, which measures the decay of uranium atoms, leading to much-improved accuracy for dating this type of rock art instead of standard carbon-dating. As a result of the new dating, the painting of a red disk has now been proved to be at least 40,800 years old, at least 15,000 years older than previously estimated. It is unclear whether the art was created by the first humans to arrive in the region, or by Neanderthals who are thought to have lived in Europe until about 40,000 years ago. Very close to the red disk in El Castillo is a hand stencil that is at least 37,300 years old, although stencilled outlines of human hands found in the Maros cave sites on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were recently dated to at least 39,900 years ago.

The earliest examples of other kinds of art are even older, such as shell beads, bits of ochre, and ostrich shells carved with geometric designs from about 70,000 to 100,000 years ago in Africa.